CHAPTER XXIV
THE ABBEY OF THE FOUNTAIN
MORNING broke. They rose and travelled on. This day they passeddefinitely from the dragon’s present reach, though yet they werein lands of Roche-de-Frêne, done into ruin by him, poisoned by hisbreath. Adventures they had, perils and escapes. These were approached,endured, passed. At night they came to a hermit’s cell where was nohermit, but on a stone hearth wood ready for firing. They closed thedoor, struck flint and steel, had presently a flame that reddened thelow and narrow walls and gave the two, tired and cold, much comfort.The hermit’s cupboard was found, and in it dried fruit and pease and apan or two for cooking. Without the cell was water, a bubbling springamong moss and fern.
The night was dark and windy. None came to strike upon the hermit’sdoor, no human voice broke in upon them. The wind shook the forestbehind the cell and scoured the valley in front. It whistled aroundtheir narrow refuge, it brought at intervals a dash of rain againstdoor and wall. But the two within were warmed and fed, and they foundan ocean-music in the night. It rocked them in their dreams, it soothedlike a lullaby. The princess dreamed of her father, and that they werereading together in a book; then that changed, and it was her old,old nurse, who told her tales of elves and fays. Garin dreamed of thedesert and then of the sea. Dawn came. They rekindled their fire andhad spare breakfast, then fared forth through a high and stormy world.
Night came, day came, nights and days, beads of light and its doings,beads of dimness and rest. They kept no list of the dangers theyentered and left, of the incidents and episodes of peril. They weremany, but the two went through like a singing shaft, like a shuttledriven by the hand of Genius. Now they were forth from the invadedprincedom, now they were gone from fiefs of other suzerains. Where theyhad faced north, now they walked with the westering sun.
When that happened, Jael the herd wore no longer the saffron cross. Ithad served the purpose, carrying her through Montmaure’s host, thatelse might not have let a woman pass.... The two had slept upon leavesin an angle of a stone wall, on the edge of a coppice. The wall ran byfields unharmed by war; they were out from the shadow. A dawn came upand unfolded like a rose of glory. The coppice seemed to sleep, the airwas so still. The night had been dry, and for the season, warm. Cockscrew in the distance, birds that stayed out the year cheeped in thetrees.
The herd-girl took her frieze mantle, and, sitting upon a stone,broke the threads that bound to it the Church’s stigma and seal. Thejongleur watched her from where he leaned against the wall. When it wasfree from the mantle, she took the shaped piece of saffron-dyed clothand moving from the stone kneeled beside their fire of sticks and gaveit to the flame. She watched it consume, then stood up. “It served me,”she said. “I know not if it ever served any upon whom it was trulychained. As I read the story, He who was nailed to the cross had aspirit strong and merciful. It is the spirits who are strong that aremerciful.”
The rose in the east grew in glory. Colour came into the land, intothe coppice, and to the small vines and ferns in their niches andshrines between the stones. Garin of the Golden Island stood in greenand brown, beside him the red-ribboned lute. “As the first day fromRoche-de-Frêne, so now again,” said Audiart, “you are the jongleur,Elias of Montaudon. I am your _mie_, Jael the herd.”
“Your will is mine, Jael the herd,” said Garin.
He bent and extinguished the fire of sticks. The two went on together,the sun behind them.... Once Vulcan had had a stithy in this country.Masses of dark rock were everywhere, old, cooled lava, dark hills,mountains and peaks. Chestnut and oak ran up the mountain-sides, thevalleys lay sunken, there was a silver net of streams. Hamlets hidbeneath hills, village and middling town climbed their sides, castlescrowned the heights, in vales by the rivers sat the monasteries. Theregion was divided between smiling and frowning. Its allegiance wasowed to a lord of storms, who, in his nature, showed now and then abroad golden beam. At present no wild beast from without entered theregion to ravage; there it smiled secure. But Duke Richard drainedit of money and men; its own kept it poor. He drained all his vastduchy and fiefs of his duchy, as his brothers drained their lands andhis father drained England. They were driving storms and waters thatwhirled and drew; one only was the stagnant kind that sat and brewedpoison. This region was a corner of the great duke’s wide lands, butthe duke helped himself from its purse, and the larger number of itsmen were gone to his wars.
But for all that, the jongleur and the herd-girl met a many people andsaw towns that to them from Roche-de-Frêne seemed at ease, relaxed, andlight of heart. Baron and knight and squire and man were gone to thewars, but baron and knight and squire and man, for this reason, forthat reason, remained. Castle drawbridges rested down, portcullisesrusted unlowered. The roads, bad though they were, had peacefultraffic; the fields had been harvested, and the harvest had not gone tofeed another world. The folk that remained were not the fiercer sort,and they longed for amusement. It rested not cold, and folk were out ofdoors. The country-side, mountain and hill and valley, hung softened,stilled, wrapped in a haze of purple-grey.
Jongleur’s art, human voice at its richest, sweetest, mostexpressive—such was wanted wherever now they went. They had jongleur’sfreedom in a singing time. Travelling on, they made pause when theywere called upon. The jongleur sang the heart out of the breast, thewater into the eyes, high thoughts and resolves into the upper rooms ofthe nature. The dark-eyed, still girl, his companion and _mie_, sat ondoorstep, or amid the sere growth of the wayside, or stood in castlehall or court, or in the market-place of towns, and listened with therest to the singing voice and the song that it uttered. The few aboutthem, or the many about them, sighed with delight, gave pay as theywere able, and always would have had the jongleur stay, sing on themorrow, and the morrow’s morrow. But jongleurs had license to wander,and no restlessness of theirs surprised. Day by day the two were able,after short delays, to take the road again.
They came to Excideuil.
“Is the duke here?”
“No. He was here, but he has gone to Angoulême.”
Elias of Montaudon brought that news to Jael the herd. She listenedwith a steady face. “Very well! In ways, that suits me better. Thereare those at Angoulême whom I know.”
The jongleur sang in the market-place of Excideuil. “Ah, ah!” criedmany, “you should have been here when our duke was here! He had a daywhen there sang six troubadours, and the prize was a cup of gold! Andyet no troubadour sang so well as you sing, jongleur!”
A week later, crown of a hill before them, they saw Angoulême. Themorning light had shown frost over the fields, but now the sun meltedthat silver film and the day was a sapphire. Wall and battlement,churches, castle, brilliant and spear-like, stood out from the bluedome: beneath spread a clear valley and clear streams. Other heightshad lesser castles, and the valley had houses of the poor. Travel uponthe road thickened, grew more various, spiced with every class andoccupation. The day carried sound easily, and there was more soundto carry. Contacts became frequent, and these were now with peopleaffected, in greater or less degree, by the sojourn in Angoulême ofDuke Richard. The air knew his presence; where he came was tension,energy held in a circumference. From the two that entered Angoulêmespread another circle. Garin felt power and will in her whom he walkedbeside, felt attention. The force within him rose to meet hers and theymade one.
The town grew larger before them, walls and towers against the sky.
“Ask some one,” said Audiart, “where is the Abbey of the Fountain?”
He asked.
“The Abbey of the Fountain?” answered the man whom he addressed. “Itlies the other side of the hill. Go through the town and out at thewest gate, and you will see it below you, among trees.”
They climbed the hill and entered Angoulême, thronged with life. To thetwo who kept the picture of Roche-de-Frêne, wrapped in clouds of stormand disaster, Angoulême might appear clad like a peacock, untroubledas a holiday child. Yet was there here—and
they divined that,too—grumbling and soreness, just anger against Richard the proud,coupled with half-bitter admiration. Here was wide conflict of opinionand mood. Life pulsed strongly in Angoulême.
Jongleur and herd-girl threaded the town, where were many jongleurs,and many women with them lacking church’s link. They regarded thecastle, and the Leopard banner above it. “Richard, Richard!” said theherd-girl, “I hope that a manner of things are true that I have heardof you!”
They came to the west gate and left the town by it. Immediately, whenthey were without the walls, they saw in the vale beneath groves of nowleafless trees and, surrounded by these, the Abbey of the Fountain.Jael the herd stood still, gazing upon it. “I had a friend—one whomI liked well, and who liked me. Now she is abbess here—the AbbessMadeleine! Let us go down to the Abbey of the Fountain, and see what weshall see.”
They went down to the vale. Great trees stretched their arms abovethem. A stream ran diamonds and made music as it went. Now there cameto Garin the deep sense of having done this thing before—of havinggone with the Princess Audiart to a great house of nuns—though surelyshe was not then the Princess Audiart.... He ceased to struggle;earthly impossibilities seemed to dissolve in a deeper knowledge. Helaid down bewilderment and the beating to and fro of thought; in alarger world thus and so must be true.
Passing through a gate in a wall, they were on Abbey land, nor was itlong before they were at the Abbey portal. Beggars and piteous folkwere there before them, and a nun giving bread to these through thesquare in the door. Garin and Audiart stood aside, waiting their turn.She gazed upon him, he upon her.
“Came you ever to a place like this,” she breathed, “in green and brownbefore?”
“I think that it is so, Jael the herd.”
“A squire in brown and green?”
He nodded, “Yes.”
Jael the herd put her hand over her eyes. “Truth my light! but our lifeis deep!”
The mendicants left the portal. The slide closed, making the door solid.
“Wait here,” said the herd-girl. “I will go knock. Wait here until youare called.”
She knocked, and the panel slid back. He heard her speaking to thesister and the latter answering. Then she spoke again, and, after amoment of hesitation, the door was opened. She entered; it closedafter her. He sat down on a stone bench beside the portal and watchedthe lacework of branches, great and small, over the blue. A cripplewith a basket of fruit sat beside him and began to talk of jongleurshe had heard, and then of the times, which he said were hard. Withhis lameness, something in him brought Foulque to Garin’s mind. “Oh,ay!” said the cripple, “kings and dukes make work, but dull work thatyou die by and not live by! The court will buy my grapes, but—” Heshrugged, then whistled and stretched in the sun.
“How stands Duke Richard in your eye?”
The cripple offered him a bunch of grapes. “Know you aught that couldnot be better, or that could not be worse?”
“Well answered!” said Garin. “I have interest in knowing how high attimes can leap the better.”
“Higher than the court fool thinks,” said the cripple. He sat a littlelonger, then took his crutch and his basket of fruit and hobbled awaytoward the town.
Garin waited, musing. An hour passed, two hours, then the panel in thedoor slid back. A voice spoke, “Jongleur, you are to enter.”
The door opened. He passed through, when it closed behind him. Thesister slipped before, grey and soundless as a moth, and led him overstone flooring and between stone walls, out of the widened space bythe Abbey door, through a corridor that echoed to his footfall, subduehis footfall as he might. This ended before a door set in an arch.The grey figure knocked; a woman’s voice within answered in Latin. Thesister pushed the door open, stood aside, and he entered.
This, he knew at once, was the abbess’s room, then saw the AbbessMadeleine herself, and, sitting beside her, that one whose companion hehad been for days and weeks. The herd-girl’s worn dress was still uponher, but she sat there, he saw, as the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, asthe friend, long-missed, of the pale Abbess. He made his reverence tothe two.
The Abbess Madeleine spoke in a voice of a silvery tone, mellowing hereand there into gold and kindness. “Sir Knight, you are welcome! I haveheard a wondrous story, and God gave you a noble part to play.—Nowwill speak your liege, the princess.”
“Sir Garin de Castel-Noir,” said Audiart, “in Angoulême lodges a greatlord and valiant knight, Count of Beauvoisin, a kinsman of the mostReverend Mother. She has written to him, to my great aiding. Take theletter, find him out, and give it to him, your hand into his. He willplace you in his train, clothe you as knight again. Only rest still ofLimousin, and, for all but this lord, choose a name not your own.” Shemused a little, her eyes upon the letter, folded and sealed, that sheheld. “But I must know it—the name. Call yourself, then, the Knight ofthe Wood.” She held out the letter. He touched his knee to the stonefloor and took it. “Go now,” she said, “and the Saints have a true manin their keeping!”
The Abbess Madeleine, slender, pure-faced, of an age with the princess,extended her hand, gave the blessing of Mother Church. He rose, putthe letter in the breast of his tunic, stepped backward from the two,and so left the room. Without was the grey sister who again went,moth-like, before him, leading him through the corridor to the Abbeydoor. She opened this—he passed out into the sunshine.
Back in Angoulême, the first man appealed to sent him to the courtquarter of the town, the second gave him precise directions wherebyhe might know when he came to it the house that lodged the Countof Beauvoisin, here in Angoulême with Duke Richard. By a tangle ofnarrow streets Garin came to houses tall enough to darken these ways,in the shadow themselves of the huge castle. He found the greatesthouse, where was a porter at the door, and lounging about it a medleyof the appendage sort. Jongleur’s art and his own suasive power gothim entrance to a small court where gathered gayer, more importantretainers. He sang for these, and heads looked out of windows. A pageappeared with a summons to the hall. Following the youngster, Garinfound himself among knights, well-nigh a score, awaiting in hallthe count’s pleasure. Here, moreover, was a troubadour of fame notinconsiderable, knight as well, but not singer of his own verses. Hehad with him two jongleurs for that, and these now looked somewhatgreenly at Garin.
A knight spoke. “Jongleur, sing here as well as you sang below, andgain will come to you!” Garin sang. “Ha!” cried the knights, “they singthat way in Paradise!”
The troubadour advanced to the front of the group and bade him singagain. He obeyed. “Gold hair of Our Lady!” swore the troubadour. “Howcomes it that you are not jongleur to a poet?”
“I had a master,” answered Garin, “but he foreswore song and, chaininghimself to a rock, became an eremite. Good sirs, if the Count mighthear me—”
“He will be here anon from the castle. He shall hear you, jongleur,and so shall our Lord, Duke Richard! Springtime in Heaven!” quoth thetroubadour. “I would take you into my employ, but though I can paylinnets, I cannot pay nightingales!—Do you know any song of Robert deMercœur?”
He asked for his own. Garin, seeing that he did so, smiled and sweptthe strings of the lute. “Aye, I know more than one!” He sang, and didsweet words justice. The knights, each after his own fashion, gaveapplause, and Robert de Mercœur sighed with pleasure. The song wasshort. Garin lifted his voice in another, made by the same troubadour.“Ah!” sighed Robert, “I would buy you and feed you from my hand!”He sat for a moment with closed eyes, tasting the bliss of rightinterpretation. Then, “Know you Garin of the Golden Isle’s, _If e’er,Fair Goal, I turn my eyes from thee_?”
Garin sang it. “Rose tree of the Soul!” said Robert de Mercœur; “thereis the poet I would have fellowship with!”
The leaves of the great door opened, and there came into hall the Countof Beauvoisin, with him two or three famed knights. All who had beenseated, or lounging half reclined, stood up; the silence o
f deferencefell at once. Garin saw that the count was not old and that he had alook of the Abbess Madeleine. He said that he was weary from riding,and coming to his accustomed great chair, sat down and stretchedhimself with a sigh. His eyes fell upon the troubadour with whom he hadacquaintance. “Ha, Robert! rest us with music.”
“Lord count,” said Robert, “we have here a jongleur with the angel ofsound in his throat and the angel of intelligence in his head! Set himto singing.—Sing, jongleur, again, that which you have just sung.”
Garin touched his lute. As he did so he came near to the count. Hestood and sang the song of Garin of the Golden Island. “Ah, ah!”said the Count of Beauvoisin. “The Saints fed you with honey in yourcradle!” A coin gleamed between his outstretched fingers. Garin camevery near to receive it. “Lord,” he whispered as he bent, “much hangsupon my speaking to you alone.”
A jongleur upon an embassy was never an unheard-of phenomenon. TheCount moved so as to let the light fall upon this present jongleur’sface. The eyes of the two men met, the one in an enquiring, the otherin a beseeching and compelling gaze. The count leaned back in hischair, the jongleur, when he had bowed low, moved to his originalstation. “He sings well indeed!” said the Count. “Give him place amonghis fellows, and when there is listening-space I will hear him again.”
Ere long he rose and was attended from the hall. The knights, too, leftthe place, each bent upon his own concerns. Only the troubadour Robertde Mercœur remained, and he came and, seating himself on the same benchwith Garin, asked if he would be taught a just-composed _alba_ ormorning song, and upon the other’s word of assent forthwith repeatedthe first stanza. Garin said it over after him. “Ha, jongleur!” quothRobert, “you are worthy to be a troubadour! Not all can give valuesvalue! The second goes thus—”
But before the _alba_ was wholly learned came a page, summoning thejongleur. Garin, following the boy, came into the count’s chamber. Herewas that lord, none with him but a chamberlain whom he sent away. “Now,jongleur,” said the count, “what errand and by whom despatched?”
Garin drew the letter from his tunic and gave it, his hand into theother’s hand. The count looked at the writing. “What is here?” hesaid. “Does the Abbess Madeleine choose a jongleur for a messenger?”He broke the seal, read the first few lines, glanced at the body ofthe letter, then with a startled look, followed by a knit brow, laidit upon the table beside him but kept his hand over it. He stood ina brown study. Garin, watching him, divined that mind and heart andmemory were busied elsewhere than in just this house in Angoulême.At last he moved, turned his head and spoke to the page. “Ammonet!”Ammonet came from the door. “Take this jongleur to some chamber wherehe may rest. Have food and wine sent to him there.” He spoke to Garin,“Go! but I shall send for you here again!”
The day descended to evening, the evening to night. Darkness hadprevailed for a length of time when Ammonet returned to the small, bareroom where Garin rested, stretched upon a bench. “Come, jongleur!” saidthe page. “My lord is ready for bed and would, methinks, be sung tosleep.”
Rising, he followed, and came again to the Count’s chamber, wherenow was firelight and candle-light, and the Count of Beauvoisin in afurred robe, pacing the room from side to side. “Wait without,” hesaid to Ammonet, and the two men were alone together. The count pacedthe floor, Garin stood by the hooded fireplace. He had seen in theafternoon that he and this lord might understand each other.
The count spoke. “No marvel that we liked your singing! What if therehad been in hall knight and crusader who had heard you beyond the sea?”
“Chance, risk, and brambles grow in every land.”
“_Garin of the Golden Island._—I know not who, in Angoulême, may knowthat you fight with Roche-de-Frêne. Duke Richard, who knows somewhat ofall troubadours, knows it.”
“I do not mean to cry it aloud.—Few in this country know my face, andmy name stays hidden.—May we speak, my lord count, of another presencein Angoulême?”
The other ceased his pacing, flung himself down on a seat before thefire, and leaned forward with clasped hands and bent head. He sat thusfor an appreciable time, then with a deep breath straightened himself.“When she was the Lady Madeleine the Abbess Madeleine ruled a greatrealm in my life. God knoweth, in much she is still my helm!... Sit youdown and let us talk.”